Various ways of customizing information are well known in the art. Personalized information service providers allow users to view news content in a particular category. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2006/0048053, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses automatically generating documents by having a user fill out a user profile, querying repositories for content matching the user's interest, filtering the results and applying automated layout techniques. In U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2006/0048042, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, an individual and personalized report document is created. The document is created using a user profile to determine interests and preferences, finding content that matches, filtering the results by scoring and profiling, applying layout techniques, delivering the document and then tracking the user's usage of the document and applying that to the profile. However, the systems described above do not contain external constraints regarding the content to be placed in the layout.
In addition to customized documents and news service, customized books are also known in the art. U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2007/0011607, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes creating a customized storybook with illustrations. However, the selection of items for printing in this book does not include or consider constraints based on the printing device or other external constraints.
The disclosure contained herein describes methods of resolving one or more of the problems discussed above.